French Farce: Hadopi's First And Only Suspension Has Been Suspended

from the ooh-la-la dept

Back in June we wrote about Hadopi's first and only successful disconnection case. As we also noted then, in the wake of its abject failure, Hadopi was being dramatically curtailed. In particular, disconnection is no longer available as a punishment for those alleged to have downloaded files without authorization.

That turns out to have a lucky consequence for the otherwise unlucky person sentenced to 15 days disconnection earlier this year. As the French Web site PC Inpact explains (original in French), before the disconnection could be carried out, the French law changed. And it is apparently an established principle in France that when milder measures are brought in for a given offense, those generally apply retroactively to anyone convicted under the previous, harsher regime. In this case, that means the suspension has been suspended.

So it looks like even that single, 15-day disconnection -- the only fruit of Sarkozy's beloved and costly "three strikes and you're out" idea -- will never happen. What a truly fitting end to a farcical experiment. The big question now is: what comes next?

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Filed Under: france, hadopi, three strikes